Author: Edward Trimnell

China: Apple and Tim Cook should have known better

I’m old enough to remember the heady days when China was “opened” to the West—back in the 1970s. Back then, American corporations believed that if they could just find a way to sell one widget to each of China’s one billion consumers—chop, chop!—riches would be theirs!

Shortly after that, China became a manufacturing base for American companies, thanks to the policies of Chinese leader Deng Xiaoping, and his special economic zones (经济特区). Under Deng, China became “the workshop of the world”.

Deng broke with Marxist-Leninist orthodoxy. He was fond of aphorisms like “To grow rich is glorious,” and “It doesn’t matter if a cat is black or white. What matters is: does the cat catch mice?”

Many people—me included, to the extent that I was paying attention—believed that China was going to become a much larger version of Japan or South Korea. Once the economic shackles of Marxism were set aside, we reasoned, liberal, Western-style democracy would naturally follow.

Then on June 3-4 1989, the Chinese Communist Party crushed a peaceful student protest in Tiananmen Square with tanks and AK-47s. The Beijing government massacred between 2,000 and 3,000 of its own citizens, many of them university students. I was a university student myself in 1989, so this one struck home. Had the circumstances of my birth been different, that might have been me.

Tiananmen Square should have been our first clue that the China of our wishful thinking was not the China of reality. We could easily have tempered our overly optimistic expectations and moderated our policies then.

But by then, the American business community was all-in on China. Yes, the Chinese government still maintained gulags and whatnot, but so what? Labor costs were cheap over there!

Then China became more militarily powerful, and the leadership changed. Deng Xiaoping, however much he repressed his own people, wanted peaceful relations with the West. But China’s new leadership, of which Xi Jinping is the latest incarnation, sought to apply the same heavy-handedness to foreign policy.

In April 2001, Chinese fighter planes forced a US Navy plane flying in international airspace to land on Hainan Island. The American crew was captured and detained for ten days. That incident got smoothed over, and was soon forgotten in the all-consuming shock and outrage over 9/11, which occurred about five months later. But still, another warning sign.

Then China unilaterally annexed portions of international waters in the South Pacific. This has brought China into near conflict with not only the USA, but also Japan, South Korea, the Philippines, Australia, and Vietnam.

As if that wasn’t enough, in the 35 years since the Tiananmen Square massacre, we’ve had numerous reports of Chinese spying, cyber attacks, and intellectual property theft.

Oh, and then there was COVID-19 in 2020. I’m not going to attempt to untangle that whole ball of bat intestines, but this was yet one more really bad thing that came out of China. At the very least, the Chinese Communist Party’s mishandling of the situation made the pandemic worse. (And that is the most charitable interpretation of the CCP’s role, among all the interpretations out there.)

The COVID-19 pandemic is now five years behind us. Many US, European, and Japanese companies have been “decoupling” from China over the past half-decade.

But not Apple. Over half of all Macs (MacBooks, iMacs, etc.) are still manufactured in China. Some 80% of iPads are made there. And 90 percent—almost all—iPhones are still Chinese-made.

Which brings us to the recent tariff brouhaha. As a former economics major, I’m no fan of tariffs. As a former employee of several Japanese companies, I have nothing against foreign corporations, foreign products, or foreign trade. (I drive a Toyota.) As a lifelong lover of foreign languages and cultures, I’m certainly no xenophobe.

But only a fool of a CEO would approach China nowadays as American executives did 40 years ago. There are scores of reasons why any American company should have long ago begun its decoupling from the People’s Republic.

Yes, that is difficult. But to paraphrase Lance Ito, that’s why Apple CEO Tim Cook and other CEOs make the big bucks. Tim Cook’s annual compensation is now $74 million.

Any B-school student with a few economics classes under his or her belt could come up with the idea of reducing costs by basing manufacturing in a low-cost country like China. The process of decoupling from China is much more difficult, and requires a lot more creativity and innovation—the sort of task for which a CEO might be paid $74 million per year. 

I might also mention that I’m an Apple devotee. I either own, or have owned, all the major Apple product lines. I’ve owned at least three iPods and two iPads. I’m now on my fourth iPhone. I’ve had multiple MacBooks and iMacs.

We have been told that an iPhone made anywhere but China (or a similar low-cost country) will cost $3,500. I call bullshit. Innovate, automate, figure out a way to do it more cheaply. For better or worse, that is now Tim Cook’s job. We’ll see if he can finally earn that $74 million. He should have foreseen this day long ago.

-ET

Sex appeal and cigarette ads: my 1970s/80s youth

During the 1970s and throughout most of the 1980s, it was common to see full-page cigarette ads in glossy magazines. Advertisements for cancer sticks had already been banned from television, but print ads were still legal, and considered fair game.

Camel ad, circa 1978 to 1983

Much has been said about the “Marlboro Man” over the years. But the Camel Dude (shown above) got a lot more female attention. I remember seeing variations of the above ad in a number of magazines that ended up in my hands during the late 1970s and early 1980s, including Field & Stream, which I read with some regularity.

We can assume that the Camel Dude got lucky on the day presented in the above ad. But one wonders: is he still alive? Perhaps not, with that smoking habit of his.

I was a pre-adolescent and adolescent in those days; and I may have been slightly influenced by the marketing message. A “great-tasting blend of Turkish and domestic tobaccos”, and hot women on the beach? Count me in, said the adolescent version of me.

Speaking of which: I haven’t smoked cigarettes at all as an adult; but I did smoke them on occasion when I was 12 to 13 years old. Another thing about the 1970s/80s: cigarette vending machines were everywhere, and underage people had no difficulty accessing them.

I certainly tried Camels. The hot blonde, as I recall, was not included.

-ET

Sen. John Kennedy: Trump is ‘the pit bull who caught the car’

We knew that the Democrats were going to come out against Trump’s tariff banzai charge.

Never mind that Democrats were the champions of tariffs in the 1980s and 1990s. Since Trump’s victory last November, Democrats have been searching for an issue, grasping at straws. Until this week’s tariff shock in the markets, the Democrats had been stuck with unpopular albatrosses like transgender primary education and free government phones for Venezuelan gang members.

Now, with the stock market going to hell, the Democrats may have finally found their issue. And this time, it’s one that reality-attached Americans actually care about: 58 percent of us have some direct exposure to the stock market.

We also knew that libertarian-minded Republicans like Rand Paul would raise the alarm. Tariffs contradict a hundred years of sound economic theory, about which Senator Paul knows a lot. (I don’t want to assume that President Trump hasn’t read the works of Adam Smith or Milton Friedman; but I wouldn’t want to lay money on such a bet, either.)

But now there are real cracks in the MAGA wall. Senator John Kennedy, a Louisiana Republican who is possibly to the right of President Trump, yesterday described the president as “the pit bull who caught the car”, where this tariff fight is concerned.

In an earlier interview on CNN, Kennedy had stated that however this shakes out, Donald Trump is responsible for the outcome. When asked, “Do you think this is Donald Trump’s economy now?”, Kennedy replied, “Oh, I think it is. There’s no question.”

The upshot of all this is that President Trump has a short window of time to either accomplish his aims, or to start backpedaling. If he does neither, then he will face a revolt from within his own party.

There are many Republican politicians who have been eager to ride Donald Trump’s coattails to power. Far fewer will be interested in riding his coattails to defeat and ignominy. Not even the most MAGA Republican believes that the party can survive a Trump-induced financial crisis for very long.

-ET

Anti-DOGE protests: how to downsize the government without causing mass outrage and widespread panic

Over this past weekend I saw several anti-DOGE protests in my neck of the woods. These were admittedly small. But I live in an Ohio county that went for Donald Trump by a 67 percent margin in 2024. This is Trump Country, by any measure.

In recent weeks, Elon Musk has eviscerated the federal government, radically downsizing some agencies, while eliminating others.

Musk’s proponents claim that he is performing a necessary surgery on a bloated federal bureaucracy. His detractors argue that he is cutting essential government functions—including some related to national security (!)—in order to fund tax cuts for billionaires.

So which side is correct?

We might start by examining historical precedent. President Trump is not the first POTUS to take pruning shears to the government. Nor is this a purely partisan issue. Major government downsizings occurred under both Reagan (Republican) and Clinton (Democrat).

On the other hand, government payrolls were expanded under Nixon and George W. Bush, both Republicans.

There are various reasons why government downsizing can be necessary—and desirable. The private sector, after all, downsizes, rightsizes, and reorganizes all the time. We can all name private-sector business entities that were thriving twenty years ago, but which don’t exist today. Should a government agency, once created, be sacrosanct?

And then there is our national debt: currently $36.56 trillion. It is no exaggeration to say that the United States faces a debt emergency.

***

But anyway: back to historical precedent. On August 10, 1993, President Bill Clinton signed the Omnibus Budget Reconciliation Act of 1993 into law. The newly elected president was alarmed at the growing federal deficit, which was then a mere $290 billion—a fraction of its current size.

The 1993 omnibus bill included a mix of tax increases and federal spending cuts. It therefore found detractors on both sides of the political continuum. But the Clinton administration took advantage of a Democratic majority in Congress to push the bill through.

Naysayers said that the omnibus bill’s tax increases would be a drag on the economy. There were also complaints about cuts to government services and benefits.

But when Bill Clinton left office in 2001, the economy was booming, and Clinton had transformed the federal deficit into a federal surplus. Unemployment dipped below 4 percent—and that was mostly from a booming private sector.

***

Throughout the spring and summer of 1993, Clinton explained his case to the American people respectfully, with plenty of numbers, and copious charts and graphs. He emphasized the shared pain of his deficit reduction efforts. (Taxes were increased on the wealthiest 1.2 percent of Americans, and certain business deductions—such as deductions for business meals—were scaled back.)

The Trump administration, by contrast, has accompanied the government cuts not with business increases on the wealthy, but with a sweeping set of tariffs that will be paid by consumers. A regressive tax, essentially.

President Trump has entrusted the government cuts to Elon Musk, a tech billionaire who once smoked weed on the Joe Rogan Podcast. Musk claims that he is cutting billions in waste and saving taxpayers trillions of dollars. Perhaps he is. But where is the data? Where is the oversight? Where are the economists and the management experts who might lend the effort some credibility, via third-party corroboration? (Or at the very least, a hint of a sanity check?)

And then there is the tone of the whole thing. Everyone knows seniors who are dependent on Social Security and Medicare. Most of us also know a government employee or two. My grandmother retired from the EPA in 1983, after a decades-long career with what used to be called the “civil service”. One of my former classmates currently works for the IRS. (As of right now, he still has his job.)

To describe these people as “parasites” or “freeloaders”—as has often been done in the rightwing media—is completely the wrong message and completely the wrong tone.

***

We almost certainly do need to make significant cuts to the size of our federal bureaucracy. But these cuts should be better explained, and there should be some sense of checks-and-balances, a public confidence that this involves more than Elon Musk looking at an agency, and giving it a thumbs-up or a thumbs-down.

The cuts should be approached with methodology and seriousness, in other words: the sort of methodology and seriousness that would have accompanied a similar restructuring, under either a Democratic or Republican administration of the past. The sort of methodology and seriousness that would accompany a similar restructuring in any large private-sector enterprise.

Most of all: the process needs to be better explained. No one is sure that Elon Musk is applying any methodology or seriousness at all. Hence the alarm over what is being done, even in some corners of Trump Country.

-ET

After the rain: April 2025’s weather-related torments

We’ve had about 7 inches of rain here in the Cincinnati area since Wednesday night. The Ohio River is now above well above flood stage.

My house is approximately 4 miles north of the river. Closer to the river, there are evacuations and some roads are closed. A handful of river towns in Ohio, Indiana, and Kentucky have been evacuated.

Luckily, my sump pump did the job and my basement stayed dry. Prior to Wednesday night’s initial round of storms, I mowed both my lawn and my dad’s lawn.

According to the weather forecast, this period of extended rain is over. So now it’s just a matter of waiting for the world to dry out. I’ve had more than enough rain until…August, thank you very much.

-ET

Hot for teacher: a 1980s view on a 21st-century problem

Christina Formella, a 30-year-old Illinois high school teacher, was arrested last week for engaging in inappropriate sexual contact with a 15-year-old male student. Formella is married, and conventionally attractive.

There has been a rash of such stories in recent years: easy-on-the-eyes, often wedded teachers having sex with their teenage male charges.

I attended high school between 1982 and 1986. Most of my teachers were Baby Boomers. I’m sure such things happened back then, but it’s safe to say that the frequency was exponentially smaller. I can’t recall any such stories making the rumor mill at my high school. Nor do I recall seeing any news stories about Boomer female teachers poaching their Gen X male students.

This seems to be a Millennial and Gen Z thing. The upsurge in such cases corresponds directly to the entry of Millennial and Gen Z women into the teaching profession. Based on her current age, the aforementioned Christina Formella was born in 1994 or 1995. My generation was already long out of high school by then, and our former teachers were already thinking about retirement.

And yet, seduction at the hands of an older woman was a constant fantasy among teenage males of my generation, at least in the teen movies of the era. In 1983, Rob Lowe was seduced by a friend’s mom in Class. In Coach (1978) Cathy Lee Crosby portrayed a retired Olympic gold medalist who ends up as the coach of a high school boy’s basketball team. And of course, sparks fly between her and one of her hunky teenage players.

Just in case you didn’t get the message, there was also the Van Halen song, “Hot for Teacher” (1984). The MTV video (which every high school boy of the mid-1980s saw, multiple times) depicts a group of adolescent boys lusting after their much older vixen of a homeroom teacher.

There was no hand-wringing in the media about any of this. It was basically accepted that lusting after older women was something that heterosexual teenage boys simply did. There was probably some truth to that assumption.

I speak from experience here. In the summer of 1981 I was 13 years old. The object of my adoration that year was the 19-year-old girl who lived across the street. Needless to say, she didn’t know I was alive.

I can’t recall any specific attractions to any of my teachers. But during those formative years, I was alternately drawn to: the twenty- and thirty-something women who worked at my dad’s place of business, the 40-year-old mother of another boy who lived down the street, and a 30-ish woman who worked at the KFC where I worked when I was 16.

Celebrity crushes have never been a major factor in my life, but at age 13 I did harbor a boyish lust for Olivia Newton-John. (That was the year “Physical” hit the charts.) She was then in her thirties, and about the same age as my parents.

Not that I discriminated against girls my own age, mind you. A teenage boy thinks about sex 24 hours per day, and he casts a wide net. (I am now in my 50s. Being far more mature, I now think about sex no more than 12 or 14 hours per day.)

I don’t claim to know the minds of women, gay people, or transgendered individuals. But I do know the minds of young males, in the adolescent rush of testosterone. I know, because I used to be one such male, in the adolescent rush of testosterone.

The inanity of political correctness clouds everything. Since the 1980s, it has become verboten to suggest that men and women are fundamentally different, that we have different levels of aggression, or that male and female sexuality represent two different phenomena. As a result, our media outlets feel compelled to describe Christina Formella (and female teachers like her) as rapists and child molesters. Fox News, for example, declared that Formella “molested” the 15-year-old boy.

I know that some of you are already going apoplectic. Some feminists will be irate at me for suggesting that women do not have the agency to engage in a male-specific sex crime. Men’s rights activists—always eager to ventilate their various grievances—will complain that I am going easy on the women: “Yet another example of female privilege!” the MRAs will snort.

Let me be clear here: there are any number of reasons why a 30-year-old woman who would have sex with a 15-year-old boy should not have a teaching license. This is certainly not “normal” behavior for an adult woman. And yes, there should be legal consequences.

But we do no one any favors by pretending that an attractive adult woman has to force herself on a heterosexual teenage boy. As a former teenage boy myself, I simply know otherwise.

-ET

MTV and Indiana small towns

I am a resident of Cincinnati, Ohio, and a frequent visitor to Indiana. My father grew up in Indiana. I have many childhood memories of family holiday gatherings in Lawrenceburg and nearby rural Switzerland County.

More recently, I took a trip with my dad to Madison, Indiana. Some of the photos from that trip can be found in an earlier post on this blog.

I have always considered myself an “honorary” Hoosier (the nickname of a person from Indiana), because of my familial ties, and also because of my affection for the state.

Family reunion in Switzerland County, Indiana, 1987.

But there are famous Hoosiers, too.  John Cougar Mellencamp was born in 1951 in Seymour, Indiana, and he grew up there. Mellencamp, now in his seventies, is a proud son of Indiana. He has long incorporated small-town Indiana into his musical brand.

Mellencamp was one of the most popular solo artists of my teenage years. He was also a frequent presence on MTV. (This was back when MTV actually played music videos, as every Gen Xer will remind you.)

Many of Mellencamp’s songs and MTV videos incorporated small-town themes. Whenever possible, he inserted an Indiana-related Easter egg or two. I have become aware of some of these only decades later.

Consider, for example, the MTV video for “Hurts So Good”. This song hit number 2 on the Billboard Hot 100 in 1982. In the summer and fall of that year, it was hard to turn on FM radio without hearing “Hurts So Good” within the hour.

The “Hurts So Good” MTV video was also popular on MTV. Little did I know, back then, that this video was filmed in the small town of Medora, Indiana. Medora is close to Seymour, where John Cougar Mellencamp grew up, and about ninety minutes from Lawrenceburg, where my father grew up.

The lesson here, for me, is that great art—and great artists—can come from anywhere. John Cougar Mellencamp would not have been the songwriter and musician he became, had he spent his formative years in Los Angeles or New York.

Many people grow up in small town or rural environments and do not find art, of course. But it is a mistake to assume that every denizen of LA is working on a screenplay, or that every NYC resident is an aspiring novelist.

-ET

Ronald Reagan on tariffs, and the new identities of our two political parties

The debate over tariffs is not a new one. It precedes, and lies in the background of the American Civil War. The British Empire’s policy of mercantilism was a key factor in the lead-up to the American Revolution.

It should therefore be no surprise to learn that tariffs, free trade, protectionism, import quotas, etc….that whole ball of wax…was the subject of debate during the 1980s, too.

At that time, the specific source of concern was the Japanese automotive industry, which was making strong inroads into the American market. American cars, meanwhile, sold poorly in Japan.

There were various reasons for the imbalance. In the 1970s and 1980s, Detroit-made automobiles were plagued by numerous quality problems. (The joke was that you didn’t want to buy a UAW-made car that rolled off the assembly line on a Monday or a Friday.)

Japanese cars, meanwhile, were comparatively cheap, high-quality, and fuel-efficient. The oil crisis eased somewhat during the 1980s, but Americans still had an appetite for vehicles that could go far on a single gallon of gas (which then cost around a dollar).

In those days, it was the Democrats who made the case for tariffs, import quotas, and protectionism. President Reagan and the Republicans resisted. The above video is President Reagan’s April 25, 1987 radio address on that very subject.

The differences between Ronald Reagan and Donald Trump are too many to enumerate here. But it’s safe to say that Ronald Reagan would have disagreed with President Trump’s recently unveiled tariff policy.

There is more than one side to the tariff issue, of course. I’ve made the case against tariffs on this blog, based on what I learned as an economics major many years ago. I also raised an important counterpoint: that globalization has exacerbated the widening inequalities between the working class and the managerial class here in the USA.

This debate will continue over the coming weeks and months, as the results of President Trump’s tariff policies become apparent. Trump’s plan may work; but the preponderance of historical and economic data suggests otherwise.

One thing is clear, though: neither the Democrats nor the Republicans represent what they did in the 1980s. For evidence, one need look no further than the current tariff debate.

-ET

Yes, Jeep “ducking” really is a thing

I was in a minor accident in January. As a result, my Toyota Venza spent a week in the body shop for repairs. During that time, I drove a rental vehicle, as provided for under the terms of my insurance policy.

When I arrived at the Enterprise office, I was given two choices: a Chevrolet Equinox or a Jeep Wrangler. I had to make an on-the-spot decision.

Without any hesitation, I opted for the Jeep. The Equinox, I knew, would be another hyper-computerized, overly engineered vehicle marketed at suburbanites. Boring! But the Jeep Wrangler would be, for me, a novel driving experience. I had never driven a Jeep before, nor even ridden in one.

The novelty got to me. Driving a Jeep is a fun exercise in driving. And I do mean exercise. When you drive one of the basic Jeep models, you feel every bump in the road. Steering the Wrangler reminded me of steering my grandfather’s 1975 Ford pickup truck, back in the day.

But hey, it was an adventure. For a few days, I imagined myself as a Jeep owner.

Then I learned about this Jeep ducking thing. When I was first told about it, I thought that my interlocutor was pulling my leg.

Then I started paying attention: I began to notice Jeeps with little rubber ducks mounted on their dashboards. They were everywhere. 

If you’re unaware of the trend, look around a parking lot sometime: you’ll see that at least half of all Jeeps have dashboards adorned with rubber ducks.

What was up with that? I wondered. Or, in the words of someone on Quora: “Why do people who drive jeeps all put those stupid ducks on their dash?”

Apparently, Jeep owners leave ducks on each others’ vehicles as a way of expressing their esprit de corps. And when a fellow Jeep owner gifts you a duck, you’re supposed to mount it on your dashboard.

Jeep ducking is just a bit too cutesy for my tastes. But it’s harmless; and if Jeep owners enjoy doing this, why not?

Nevertheless, I’m glad that there is no similar custom of placing bath toys on Toyotas. No way I would drive around with rubber ducks mounted on the dashboard of my Venza.

-ET

A stabbing in Frisco, and 17-year-old boys who carry knives to high school track meets

Frisco, Texas is located in suburban Dallas. I have been there. It isn’t a dangerous environment.

But it turned out to be a deadly environment for 17-year-old Austin Metcalf, when he encountered another 17-year-old, Karmelo Anthony, at a high school track meet.

After a brief altercation over a seat in the bleachers, Karmelo Anthony pulled a knife and stabbed Metcalf to death.

The racial dynamics of this case are attracting attention. Anthony, the killer, is black. The late Austin Metcalf was white. The mainstream media has thus far shown little interest in Metcalf’s murder. Nor is it likely that Austin Metcalf will be transformed into a national martyr, in the way Trayvon Martin was a decade ago.

Some say that this is because the crime “does not fit the narrative”. There is no indication, so far, that race was a factor in the slaying. (Anthony and Metcalf were athletes from rival schools.) A cynic, however, could not help wondering if CNN and MSNBC would have given this crime more attention had the races of the killer and the victim been reversed. (At any rate, the mainstream media’s consistent refusal to cover crimes involving black perpetrators and white victims only fuels such cynicism.)

But questions of racial politics aside, there are some conclusions that can be drawn. Karmelo Anthony’s father, Andrew Anthony, told reporters that his son is a “good kid”. Because “good kids” stab other kids to death all the time, perhaps?

I have not been a 17-year-old boy since 1985, about 40 years now. But some rules of thumb transcend the generations. A “good kid” who takes bladed weapons to high school track meets is a conceptual oxymoron. In my experience, good kids usually don’t see the need to carry deadly weapons to school athletic events.

Similarly, a kid who immediately pulls a knife and stabs another over a dispute about a seat in the bleachers was probably never on his way to becoming Citizen of the Year. If Karmelo Anthony is a contemporary example of a “good kid”, may the Almighty save us all from the truly bad ones.

-ET

The progressive argument for tariffs, and my 1984 running shoes

As I stated earlier this week, I have my doubts about the tariffs that the president rolled out yesterday. As a former economics major, I am also aware of the economic arguments against tariffs. (So please do not feel obligated to send me a copy-and-pasted treatise on the subject. I almost certainly know more about it than you do.)

That said, there is a counterargument. There is a counterargument for almost everything. And this one is worth considering: my 1984 running shoes.

In 1984, I began to run high school track and cross country. I needed a pair of specialized running shoes. While there have been some enhancements over the past 40 years, the basic technology of running shoes has remained the same. Running shoes aren’t like computers.

My brand-named running shoes (either Nike or New Balance) cost $29.99 in 1984. That’s about $92 in 2025 money, and about what a similar pair of shoes would cost today.

But here’s the thing: my 1984 shoes had a MADE IN THE USA tag.

Nowadays, most running shoes are made in Vietnam, Indonesia, etc.

So what the heck happened?

Here’s what happened: large corporations like Nike started paying much less for labor when they shipped production overseas. Their inflation-adjusted prices largely stayed the same. Their profits increased.

Where did those profits go?

How about CEO pay?

CEO pay has risen by more than one thousand percent since 1978. In 2020, CEOs were paid 351 times as much as the average worker. Pay has also increased substantially for other members of the managerial and shareholder class.

In other words, it could be that in the age of globalization, corporations like Nike are underpaying for labor, and overpaying for management. By this logic, reshoring overseas production would restore a balance of compensation between the working class and the managerial class. (Note: No one is suggesting that CEOs should be paid the same as factory workers. But should CEOs earn 350 times more than the average worker?)

Ironically, this is similar to arguments that pro-labor Democrats made in the 1980s, back when Republicans were the champions of free trade, and the cheerleaders of the “global economy”.

Like everything else concerning economic theory, this argument is also made ceteris paribus, or “all else remaining the same”. Will reshoring production mitigate wealth inequality in America? I don’t know.

What I do know is this: in 1984, companies like Nike and New Balance figured out how to profitably manufacture running shoes in the USA, without charging $400 for a pair of shoes.

If they could do it in 1984, why can’t they do it now?

-ET

Third-term hopes and fears, and the 22nd Amendment 

President Trump has been hinting about running for a third term. This would violate the 22nd Amendment.

The 22nd Amendment, ratified in 1951, states that:

“No person shall be elected to the office of the President more than twice, and no person who has held the office of President, or acted as President, for more than two years of a term to which some other person was elected President shall be elected to the office of the President more than once.”

First things first. I suggest that everyone stop worrying about a third Trump term. Donald Trump will be 82 in 2028. Octogenarian status has proven to be a barrier for US presidential candidates, including the frail Joe Biden, and including Bernie Sanders, who is still quite hale and alert at 83. A recent poll showed that only 45 percent of Republicans would welcome a third Trump term, even if it were possible.

But let’s get back to this issue of the 22nd Amendment. The 22nd Amendment was a response to Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s historic and unprecedented four terms in office. FDR was in the White House from 1933 until his death in 1945. FDR was the only president my maternal grandparents (born in 1921 and 1922) knew during their formative years.

FDR’s long period in office can be attributed to several factors: a weak Republican bench in that era, and the consecutive crises of the Great Depression and World War II. We must also conclude that he was popular and had a certain fan base. My maternal grandparents always spoke fondly of him, and he made them both into lifelong Democrats.

The 22nd Amendment was a mostly Republican project, championed by GOP congressmen like Robert A. Taft and Earl C. Michener. The Republicans of the immediate postwar era feared a second coming of FDR, perhaps. 

But is there any good reason why a popular and successful man or woman should not be able to run for a third—or even fourth—term?

No such limit is placed on members of Congress. Senator Ed Markey of Massachusetts has been in Congress since 1977. To put that in perspective: I was nine years old and in the fourth grade when Markey began his congressional career. Later this year I will turn 57.

We are comfortable with congresspersons having half-century careers (Ed Markey is not alone in his congressional longevity), but we fear the third presidential term as a sign of looming dictatorship?

If a president can win a third term, then why not? A younger version of Ronald Reagan could easily have won reelection in 1988. Likewise, it is not unreasonable to speculate that Barack Obama could have won reelection to a third term in 2016. For you Democrats out there: Trump squeaked out a narrow Electoral College victory against Hillary Clinton in 2016. How would he have fared against the incumbent President Obama?

In modern times, it is rare for either party to hold the White House for three consecutive terms, even when they run new candidates. It has only happened once in my lifetime: when George H.W. Bush won the White House after serving as Ronald Reagan’s vice president for eight years.

During my lifetime, the one-term president has been the much more consistent outcome: Gerald Ford, Jimmy Carter, George H.W. Bush, and Joe Biden all failed to win a second term. (Note: Ford entered the Oval Office in the aftermath of Watergate, and had less than a full term in office. Kamala Harris ran as Joe Biden’s party-appointed proxy.)

His age aside, by 2028, Donald Trump will have been either a president or a presidential candidate for 13 years. Trump fatigue will have set in long before then. (If this business with the tariffs does not go well,  Trump fatigue will afflict the deep-red sectors of the country long before 2028.)

A third Trump term strikes me as highly unlikely, even without the impediment of the 22nd Amendment. But a tenable case can be made for reconsidering the 22nd Amendment, nonetheless.

-ET

James Bond, Helen Mirren, and the decline of male fiction reading

British actress Helen Mirren recently  told a reporter that the long-running James Bond franchise is “born out of profound sexism”.

Oh, I think we know where this is going! Wag those fingers, clutch those pearls!

Let us first acknowledge that Helen Mirren has a point. But the more precise descriptor here would be laddish. If you read any of the James Bond novels (penned by Ian Fleming), you’ll find lots of action, clear lines of good and evil, and lusty femme fatales. It doesn’t get any more laddish than that.

James Bond was created in 1953, at the height of the Cold War. That was also more than 70 years ago. The James Bond novels were never meant to be highbrow, or even middlebrow. This was male escapist fiction, from a time when men still read fiction (more on that shortly). US President John F. Kennedy was a famous fan of the series; but he wasn’t alone. Many Cold War-era men, many of them World War II veterans, read the James Bond novels as a form of fantasy fulfillment.

And what was the stuff of those fantasies? Taking down the bad guys (usually the Soviets, in the context of the Cold War), and being admired by beautiful women half one’s age.

Oh, perish forbid. How is this any different from so-called “curvy girl fiction”, which casts overweight women as the sought-after sex objects of quarterbacks, billionaires, and even princes? Is one form of fantasy fulfillment more unlikely or pernicious than the other? (Isn’t that why it’s called “fantasy fulfillment” and “escapism” to begin with?)

I don’t begrudge the readers of curvy girl fiction their fantasy fulfillment. And I don’t begrudge our Cold War grandfathers their daydreams of saving the world and bedding scores of hot babes along the way. There are far greater injustices in the world, if one wishes to object to something.

I would rather object to the now decades-long trend of men avoiding fiction altogether. No one disputes the basic facts here; it’s been verified by study after study. Men will read nonfiction (though sparingly). Few twenty-first century men read novels. 

I also know this anecdotally. I can’t convince my male friends to read anything more literary than a Tim Ferriss self-help book. (And even then, they’d really prefer the audiobook version!)

This wasn’t always the case. My grandfather, who barely had a high school education, compulsively read western, crime, and adventure paperbacks. I mean…the man read fiction all the time. He kept stacks of paperbacks lying around.

I’m sure that many of my grandfather’s novels were of the male escapist variety, too. Helen Mirren might have described them as “born out of profound sexism”. How feminist do you think the average Zane Grey novel was, after all?

But what she really means by that is: attuned to common male fantasies, relating not just to the opposite sex, but also to the sorts of derring-do that have long excited the male imagination. The kind of adventures that men used to find in novels, but now search for in professional sports and video games.

Why do so few men read fiction nowadays? Maybe it’s because most fiction published nowadays bores most male readers to tears. It isn’t written or published with them in mind, and they know it.

I repeat: my grandfather was an avid fiction reader. So was John F. Kennedy. Have men changed? Or has the publishing industry changed?

-ET

The 1974 Super Outbreak and me

In early April of 1974, I was but a wee lad in kindergarten. My dad worked in sales. My mother and I sometimes accompanied him on business trips.

And so it was that on April 3, 1974, my father, my mother, and I traveled to Louisville, Kentucky—just in time for that city’s historic 1974 F4 tornado, which was part of the equally historic “super outbreak” of that year.

Why was it called a “super outbreak”? Between April 3 and 4, at least 149 tornados were documented across 13 states. Over three hundred people lost their lives. It was a big news story, for anyone alive and sentient then.

My parents and I were staying in a one-story motel not far from the Louisville F4 tornado when it hit. I was not yet six years old, and so I had only the vaguest idea that something bad was happening. But I realized that all was not well.

For one thing, my parents were visibly alarmed. When you’re a young kid and your parents are nervous, that probably means that you should be concerned, too.

I remember the high winds and the freight train sound of the tornado. I did not see the tornado itself, but I certainly saw its aftermath. Louisville looked like a war zone. On our drive home to Cincinnati the next morning, I recall seeing a swing set thrown into the middle of the highway by the tornado. I particularly remember that.

So far as lasting traumas go, there were some minor ones. For a number of months, I had recurring dreams about a giant lifting off the roof of our house. And to this day, I don’t like violent spring and summer storms. I learned at an early age how quickly such storms can turn deadly.

-ET

What I learned about tariffs in 1988

In the fall of 1988 I was twenty years old, and a new economics major at the University of Cincinnati.

I was not a new college student. I had entered university in the fall of 1986 as an English major, then switched to biology, before settling on economics. But anyway, there I was: taking Microeconomics 101 in the fall of 1988.

One of the broad themes of the class was that government bureaucrats and social engineers meddle with the economy at their peril—and the peril of the citizenry. For example, we learned that rent controls, popular among progressives, have the effects of reducing both the quantity and the quality of available housing.

We learned about tariffs, too. Tariffs are often popular for ideological reasons, or when there is a sense that domestic producers have difficulty competing.

Tariffs are not without their positive side. They do benefit a small number of domestic producers and workers. But these limited benefits come at a significant cost.

Tariffs raise prices on foreign-made goods for the obvious reason: this price increase is a direct outcome of the tariff. But tariffs raise prices on domestic-made products, too. This second price increase occurs because domestic producers suddenly face a less competitive environment. All they have to do is maintain their prices just below the artificially raised prices of the tariffed, foreign goods.

A tariff is a tax on consumers, and a wealth transfer device. When tariffs are enacted on foreign steel—to cite one example—consumers pay the “tax” of higher prices. Part of this benefit goes to the government, and part of it serves as a subsidy to domestic steel manufacturers. The government, in other words, is forcing consumers to send more of their money to domestic steel producers than would have been the case without the tariff.

Tariffs can also lower quality (because of reduced competition) and lower aggregate demand (because of higher prices). Tariffs are not a tool for mass, shared prosperity.

I want to emphasize that none of this is cutting-edge economic knowledge. I learned all of this almost 37 years ago, as a twenty-year-old college student. The ill effects of tariffs, are—quite literally—Economics 101.

What is astounding is that we have come to a point where the people running our government seem not to grasp the basics of economics. Yes, I’m talking about the Trump administration.

Is it possible that the basic economic theory I was taught in 1988 is wrong? Anything is possible. But it’s highly unlikely. Moreover, the stated motives for the Trump administration’s tariffs—a 19th-century version of mercantilism in which Americans only manufacture, and purchase nothing from abroad (not even raw materials)—strikes me as ahistorical and utopian. It is based on ideology, not economics. 

This is rather like the Biden administration’s previous efforts to force all of us to drive electric cars, even when we didn’t want them. But given the scope of the upcoming tariffs, the Trump administration’s efforts to direct economic behavior from on high could prove far more catastrophic.

If you don’t believe me, consult any economics textbook. Consult Thomas Sowell’s Basic Economics. All of these sources will tell you the same thing.

The Trump administration’s tariff plan is not sound economics, and it is certainly not conservatism. It would be best described as a reckless exercise in wishful thinking.

-ET